Blog / Up In The Air

Okay, Okay! That headline was to grab your attention, but there’s truth to it. Would I recommend someone travel all the way to Pago Pago (pronounced Pahngo Pahngo) for some R & R? Absolutely not. Why? Let me list the reasons:

2. Speaking of threes, there are only three hotels on the island and Sadie’s By The Sea, where we stayed, was the best option. It had a beach, a great restaurant, a friendly concierge, but the rooms reminded me of our sterile Holiday Inn hotel rooms in the bad part of Mexico City. Oh, and one of the crew members had their cell phone stolen.

3. There’s not much to do. There’s no shopping, there are barely any restaurants, and the only beach side restaurant we came across- Tisa’s Barefoot Bar- was closed. With that said, when our Crown Princess cruise ship came into port, the whole island changed: shops came out of nowhere, our hotel suddenly had stand up paddle boarding and drink specials, and there were street side vendors with fruit! Whaaaaaaa???

When it comes to American Samoa, it was a little bit of both, but mostly the latter. The people I was with were amazing. We had the island to ourselves! It was unreal. We rented a cheap car from the hotel and let the one road takes us for as long as we could explore. Every single beach was deserted with these gorgeous huts. It’s an instagrammer’s dream and truly one of the most magical places I’ve been to in this world.

I want to go back, get away from it all, and, of course, bring my DSLR.

October is a big month! Today was the premiere of Vacation Creation and it’s also the first day of Plan a Cruise Month. Yep, October is Plan A Cruise Month! After spending the last few weeks filming on a variety of cruises, I am so happy to let you guys know that the cruise industry is kicking off the annual #CruiseSmile #Sweepstakes to celebrate.. which means you can win a free cruise!

Now through October 31st, enter your best #CruiseSmile selfie each day for a chance to win one cruise vacation of choice each week in October. The picture doesn’t have to be you on a cruise, but it does have to include a smile.

To enter, upload your “cruise smile” selfie at www.CruiseSmile.org and share the entry with friends. For more chances to win, post your photo on Twitter and/or Instagram using #CruiseSmile and #sweepstakes and share your #CruiseSmile with friends to earn even more entries into the sweepstakes.

Whether it’s swimming through the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean or Tahiti, visiting palaces in Saint Petersburg or Sweden, or going to big metropolises like Shanghai and Hong Kong- this is a wonderful way to see the world. Good luck!

Well, this is crazy! I’ve been a bit quiet recently as I’ve been caught up in the whirlwind dream that is Vacation Creation. It’s a brand new travel show that premieres tomorrow – Saturday, October 1st – at 10:30am on The CW! Be there or be square!

The premise of the show is to give deserving families a dream vacation…and this is also a dream come true for me! If you’ve been following me, you know I’ve been working hard for years building a travel brand. Whenever someone asked me what the “dream job” was, I said, “Oh, to have a network travel show,” but I never actually thought it would actually happen. It was such a big dream and there just aren’t many travel shows on US television- let alone on a major network. Vacation Creation is all so surreal.

And what makes it even better is that my amazing co-host/living legend Tommy Davidson and I are giving truly deserving people a dream vacation. It’s been inspiring to be around people who have persevered through so much and so fulfilling to end each day of work- not only visiting beautiful places – but giving people an experience that would be extremely hard to replicate on their own.

As the black sheep daughter of a radiologist (because what kind of a profession is TV Hosting anyway?!), I felt like this video was the culmination of my father-daughter relationship. I spent over an hour on the phone with my dad, who explained the ins-and-outs of radiation to me. He told me a lot of incredible information that didn’t make the cut – like did you know that milli, of millirems, comes from the Latin word for mile, because the length of a mile was supposedly the distance of 1,000 Roman soldier steps? #NerdAlert Now you know where it comes from.

This video took a ton of time to research and edit, but it was worth the wait, because it is filled with a ton of really cool- and valuable- information. Well, if you think science is cool, which, for the record, it is! My favorite factoid was learning that humans give off more radiation than a scanner! This is why I’m thankful a sleep alone.